Too Big To Jail?

Last week (2012.08.22) William B. Harrison Jr. penned an OP-ED in The New York Times defending bankers. Harrison retired as Chairman of JP Morgan Chase in 2006 when he was rolling the dice with the best of the big banksters at the height of the Casino-i-zation of our banking sector. 

Harrison’s OP-ED would be laughable if he were not talking about a tragedy. A tragedy impacting nearly everyone in the world except the too-big-to-fail banks and the banksters who run them. They are back at their gaming tables doing fine since we bailed them out; safe in the knowledge that when they lose, we’ll be forced to bail them out again.

Harrison is wildly out of step with Sanford I. “Sandy” Weill, who suggested in a CNBC interview (2012.07.25) that it is time to break up the big banks. Not a new idea, but coming from Weill it exploded in the news cycle. Weill is the father of the very monster zombie banks that he now wants broken up. In 1997 he merged  Travelers Insurance Group and Citibank, creating the largest financial institution on the face of the earth. 

Like Harrison, Weill retired in 2006. However, unlike Harrison’s convoluted apologia, Weill takes a totally different tack. He wants the gaming tables out of our banks. Weill wants bankers focused on watching our money and making loans. It took a lot for Weill to step up and suggest that times have changed and it’s time to break up the big banks.

When Roger Clemens denied steroid use before a Congressional Committee, they went after him tooth and nail. The evidence against Clemens was pitifully weak and he was acquitted. Two years ago four Goldman Sachs executives appeared before a Committee led by Senator Carl Levin. 

Under oath they dodged and twisted and turned, but made statements that internal Goldman memos and emails showed were untrue; they lied. It’s difficult to prove that the “Wild West Wall Streeters” committed fraud. However, the arrogant banksters who lied under oath to Congress surely broke the law.

Senator Levin turned their testimony over to the Justice Department. While it’s tough to prove fraud, how tough can it be to show that the Goldman crowd lied? There’s a long paper trail to backup the charges. Where is the zeal displayed in prosecuting Clemens? Gone. The Department of Justice has advised the Sachs executives that they will not be prosecuted.   

There’s more. Six months ago Sachs, Wells Fargo and Chase all got SEC “Wells Notices” indicating the agency’s intent to look into their well-documented role in the current downtrend. In an abrupt about face the SEC let Sachs off the hook; they’re singing “Anything Goes.”

Well the lying dudes and the doubling dealing traders at Sachs are having a Cole Porter moment but not Sergey Aleynikov. He has been charged by NY State with stealing computer code when he worked at Sachs. This, only six months after Sergey was acquitted of the same charges in Federal Court. As one blogger noted, “The only way to get arrested when you work at Goldman Sachs, is to be accused of stealing from Goldman Sachs.”